I Need Love
I don't want to live if I don't feel loved. However, I don't need love in order to survive. But who's going to love me again? Where's that going to come from? To others, not being loved may not be a big deal. To me, it's like having my heart, my mind, and my entire being violently ripped apart.
It also makes me feel like not wanting to do anything. If I had a girlfriend who loved me, I could feel motivated to do lots of things. For example, I could be motivated to go to work. Right now, I feel too depressed to work. If I said this to my hypothetical girlfriend, she may say something like, "Please, do it for me." That would get my engine running. I would do it if it was for her, but not for me. Why should I work? The main reason why most people work is to earn a living. I.e., in exchange for working for their employer, they receive a salary. In turn, they use their salary to pay for things they need, such as food. Even if I worked at my dream job, it wouldn't be enough for me to feel like life is worth living. I know, theories state that work overcomes depression. Still, I need energy to do work. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I don't have the energy to make a single step. For what it's worth, all I have is the energy to ponder making a single step. Unfortunately, actions speak louder than words, or in this case, thoughts. (Sorry about all the clichés. :) ) Another side effect of having a girlfriend would be that I would be less lazy, and I would take better care of myself. I would take care of my diabetes. I would eat healthier and follow the diet I'm supposed to be following. I would exercise more often. I do none of these things now b/c I don't love myself at all. In fact, many times I hate myself.
Imagine two hypothetical people, person A and person B. They are exactly the same, except that during their childhood Person A grew up in a loving family but person B did not. Person A's parents loved him or her. They took an active interest in his life. They did things with him, but they weren't doting. In other words, they made sure that he had structure and discipline, and that he stayed within his boundaries. They spent time with him. They paid attention to his emotional needs. They recognized and honored his accomplishments. They were proud of him. They did these and other supportive, encouraging, warm, and caring things for him. Person B's parents did none of these things. They weren't cruel or abusive, but they weren't anything else either. All things being equal, if person A paid any attention to his parents, he must have much more self-confidence than person B.
I am person B. I contend that if I were person A, I would not be depressed or suicidal today. Unfortunately, such a thing cannot be proved. I know that having loving parents is not the only way to have high self-confidence. It sure as hell doesn't hurt, though. If my parents took an active interest in my life, I would have gotten the message that the things in which I was interested were worth in being interested. In other words, it would have helped me believe that the actions I took to pursue my interests had meaning. The absence of this was one of the ways that I came to believe that my actions had no meaning. I could have made friends that could have and can do this. But if my parents were like this, I would have gotten the message that my actions had meaning by default.
Right now I don't find my life worth living. Therefore, I need to get substantial answers to many questions. What am I going to do about this? Given that I am person B, is there anything I can do to become person A? How do I proceed? How do I make life worth living? By making friends? This is too hard for me for many reasons. One, rejection destroys me. I make too many negative interpretations of other people's behavior. Where do I find the energy to overcome that? What are my alternatives? I guess I'm supposed to ask the other person exactly what he or she means. Two, the potential for rejection plus the need for me to coordinate several difficult behaviors in the act of socializing make forming friendships just too much of a hassle. Maybe my bar is too high. Maybe making friends should never be a hassle. Regardless, this is why I just completely avoid socializing altogether. Three, all the work I have to put into this doesn't look like it will yield the intended result (i.e. the long term benefits of making friends isn't worth the effort involved). Four, the simple fact that making friends requires effort for me automatically puts me at a disadvantage to others who already have friends. Five, making friends is not supposed to be something that takes thirty years to accomplish. I'm jealous of other people who can make friends easily. I attribute this partly to my parents coming from another culture, but mostly just to my shyness. Some people are just born naturally sociable and outgoing. Is it fair that I have to expend tremendous amounts of energy to make friends, while others can do the same effortlessly?
Friday, March 05, 2004
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Wanting What Should Happen To Happen
I had one goal. I wanted to be able to walk into a store near my home and buy one box of ten 3 1/2" floppy disks for myself. That's all. I did not achieve my goal because I wanted what should have happened to happen.
I went into a STAPLES store near where I lived. I figured that a box of floppy disks was a pretty common thing, so I expected I'd find it out in the open, probably somewhere near the front of the store. The first sign I noticed that this was going to be a bad experience was that as soon as I walked in, the place was packed. I found out later that an OfficeMax store across the street recently took a dive, so predictably all the customers that they had now stuffed themselves into here. That was aggravation number one. Aggravation number two was that the disks were not out in the open as I hoped. Now, you would think that if I had the slightest bit of difficulty finding something, I would have just asked for help from someone who works there and spared myself the headache. However, there were problems with that too, but I'll get to that later. I eventually found the floppy disks behind a locked cabinet along with several other pieces of expensive computer equipment. This was aggravation number three because why would anyone in their right mind want to store something that costs less than $5.00 in a locked cabinet?
At this point, I had no choice but to get someone to help. Aggravation number four was that I tried to get the attention of at least five different people, but they all completely ignored me as if I weren't even there. Talk about your invalidating environments. I know that the effective thing to do in this situation was to wake these people up and to be more assertive in getting them to help me. I didn't do this because I believed that this is not the way customer service is supposed to work. Store employees are paid to assist customers. It's their job to help me out. I believe that I shouldn't have to bend over backwards just to attract their attention. There are some stores I walk into where, as soon as I set foot in the place, the salesmen cater to me hand and foot, and if I tell them I don't need any help, they still watch over me as if I'm an armed criminal.
Anyway, I noticed that they had a customer help desk, and I thought I was in luck because it was empty. Wrong. It was empty for a reason. I stood directly in front of the help desk guy for at least five minutes, and he never looked at me even once. Then, a person who was ostensibly his boss or a co-worker came by and asked him to help another customer who needed help. Then he dropped whatever he was doing and helped this other customer out, leaving me completely alone at the help desk. Not only was I invalidated, but now I was abandoned. I finally managed to catch somebody who was alone who paid attention to me. I said to him that I needed to get something from behind the glass cabinets. He said to me, "Keys... I don't have any keys.... Ask that guy." As if I gave a fuck whether or not he had any keys. All I wanted was my box of disks! He ended up pointing to the same prick who had ignored me earlier, which was the last straw. He didn't acknowledge my existence before, so what reason would I have to believe that he would do so now? By this point, I was so flabbergasted by the entire experience that I just left in a huff.
As I said, I believed that they should have come to me, not the other way around. That's what got in the way of accomplishing something as trivial as buying a box of floppies. I was a cash-paying customer, and they just lost my business. It didn't matter that the amount of money I was spending was only $5.00. If I were shopping for a $2,000 computer and I had the same experience, they would have lost that money as well. If I were an IT director looking for a vendor to furnish computers for my company, they would have lost that money as well.
I had one goal. I wanted to be able to walk into a store near my home and buy one box of ten 3 1/2" floppy disks for myself. That's all. I did not achieve my goal because I wanted what should have happened to happen.
I went into a STAPLES store near where I lived. I figured that a box of floppy disks was a pretty common thing, so I expected I'd find it out in the open, probably somewhere near the front of the store. The first sign I noticed that this was going to be a bad experience was that as soon as I walked in, the place was packed. I found out later that an OfficeMax store across the street recently took a dive, so predictably all the customers that they had now stuffed themselves into here. That was aggravation number one. Aggravation number two was that the disks were not out in the open as I hoped. Now, you would think that if I had the slightest bit of difficulty finding something, I would have just asked for help from someone who works there and spared myself the headache. However, there were problems with that too, but I'll get to that later. I eventually found the floppy disks behind a locked cabinet along with several other pieces of expensive computer equipment. This was aggravation number three because why would anyone in their right mind want to store something that costs less than $5.00 in a locked cabinet?
At this point, I had no choice but to get someone to help. Aggravation number four was that I tried to get the attention of at least five different people, but they all completely ignored me as if I weren't even there. Talk about your invalidating environments. I know that the effective thing to do in this situation was to wake these people up and to be more assertive in getting them to help me. I didn't do this because I believed that this is not the way customer service is supposed to work. Store employees are paid to assist customers. It's their job to help me out. I believe that I shouldn't have to bend over backwards just to attract their attention. There are some stores I walk into where, as soon as I set foot in the place, the salesmen cater to me hand and foot, and if I tell them I don't need any help, they still watch over me as if I'm an armed criminal.
Anyway, I noticed that they had a customer help desk, and I thought I was in luck because it was empty. Wrong. It was empty for a reason. I stood directly in front of the help desk guy for at least five minutes, and he never looked at me even once. Then, a person who was ostensibly his boss or a co-worker came by and asked him to help another customer who needed help. Then he dropped whatever he was doing and helped this other customer out, leaving me completely alone at the help desk. Not only was I invalidated, but now I was abandoned. I finally managed to catch somebody who was alone who paid attention to me. I said to him that I needed to get something from behind the glass cabinets. He said to me, "Keys... I don't have any keys.... Ask that guy." As if I gave a fuck whether or not he had any keys. All I wanted was my box of disks! He ended up pointing to the same prick who had ignored me earlier, which was the last straw. He didn't acknowledge my existence before, so what reason would I have to believe that he would do so now? By this point, I was so flabbergasted by the entire experience that I just left in a huff.
As I said, I believed that they should have come to me, not the other way around. That's what got in the way of accomplishing something as trivial as buying a box of floppies. I was a cash-paying customer, and they just lost my business. It didn't matter that the amount of money I was spending was only $5.00. If I were shopping for a $2,000 computer and I had the same experience, they would have lost that money as well. If I were an IT director looking for a vendor to furnish computers for my company, they would have lost that money as well.
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